The Dark Side of the Internet: "Swatting"

When you hear the term "swatting" you may picture yourself swatting away a bug on your arm, but in reality swatting has become a very dangerous form of internet trolling. When someone is swatted an internet troll anonymously phones in some type of threat to the police and gives them the address of their victim. Most of the common threats include hostages at gunpoint or a good ole fashioned bomb threat. If the call is convincing enough police often sends a SWAT team, hence the term swatting. This potentially life threatening prank has been around for quite some time, but with the growing popularity of internet streaming sites like twitch.tv police are seeing a rise in the swatting phenomena. Being able to see their pranks unfold on a live feed while sitting at home behind their computer screen with complete anonymity is much more enjoyable for these trolls than just any plain old prank call.

Most of the victims of swatting pranks don’t suffer any consequences after the incident is deemed a hoax, but twitch.tv sensation, Alexander Wachs a.k.a. Whiteboy7thst, wasn’t so lucky. In the middle of one of his normal streams a police officer and a K-9 walk into the room then the stream shuts off. Someone had called in a prank threat to his local police department and when the police did a routine sweep of the house to make sure there was no danger, they found Wachs’ personal marijuana stash and promptly arrested him. Like I said most streamers have been more fortunate than Whiteboy. Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert, a successful Counter-Strike player, and his father were able to defuse the situation and explain to police what was going on. After talking to the police, the 911 response unit placed a marker on their address and if any emergencies were phoned in the family would be called before any emergency personnel would be dispatched. So not only does having the SWAT team show up at their home pose a danger for this family, but now if actual emergency arises the 911 dispatchers have to make sure it is real before they will send help. I find that absolutely ridiculous.

In 2013, the FBI placed the number of swatting incidents at about 400 per year, but many people think that number is low. Also in 2013, Google trends showed an increase in the term “swatting” and it has only gone up since. Not only is it hard to determine when a threat is real or a hoax, but police are also finding it increasingly difficult to track down suspects when most of the perpetrators are wannabe hackers. In all reality it is very easy to make one of these prank phone calls and not get caught. All one really needs is a VPN client and to make the call from Skype’s calling feature. Internet trolls like Lizard Squad are infamous for exposing victims home address, phone numbers, and other sensitive information you wouldn’t want in the wrong hands. The Lizard Squad has taken responsibility for a few swatting incidents. They also like to DDOS websites so that no one is able to access the website. They took down twitch.tv for 4 hours and told people that if they wanted it back up they had to tweet at the hacking groups twitter page pictures of themselves with Lizard Squad written across their foreheads. While CMC has enhanced many things in our lives there are also “Keyboard Warriors” out there that hid behind their computer screens and cause other people grief and harm. 

http://www.dailydot.com/esports/swatting-twitch-trend-prank/